A Sampling of Recent Acquisitions

• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman – If a virulent virus—or even the Rapture—depopulated Earth overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished? That's the provocative, and occasionally puckish, question posed by Weisman (An Echo in My Blood) in this imaginative hybrid of solid science reporting and morbid speculation. Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for centuries would start to crumble. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years—along with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics manufactured since the mid-20th century. Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since 1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard. From a patch of primeval forest in Poland to monumental underground villages in Turkey, Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like. – starred review, Publishers Weekly
• Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson – Women who use birth control pills probably care more about their effectiveness than about how they actually work, and although ignorance here may be bliss, it also cheats one of a good science story, involving a driven chemist making a serendipitous discovery about cortisone. Le Couteur and Burreson roll out 17 episodes selected for their salience in affecting health as well as history at large. This pair of chemists doesn't over interpret a particular chemical as a historical influence but makes speculating on, say, piperene, a sporting diversion. Piperene is the molecule that causes taste buds to sting from pepper. Venice had a monopoly on the pepper trade, which rivals wished to break, motivating the voyages of discovery. Although connections frame the authors' tales (the title refers to tin buttons, which contributed to Napoleon's defeat in Russia), each story dwells on its molecular protagonist. The authors diagram the formula and shape of each, from the polymer behind the sheen in silk to the ionic bonds in the taste of salt. Well-conceived, well-done popular science. -- Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
• The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler by Thomas Hager – A fast-paced account of the early-20th-century quest to develop synthetic fertilizer. Today hundreds of factories convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia in order to manufacture the artificial fertilizers that make modern-day agricultural yields possible. They are based on the technological advance known as the Haber-Bosch process, developed prior to World War I by the German chemists and Nobel laureates Fritz Haber (1868–1934) and Carl Bosch (1874–1940). Hager (The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug, 2006, etc.) offers a superb narrative of these brilliant men and their scientific discovery. Around the turn of the century, the world faced a shortage of the fixed nitrogen needed to provide food for a growing population. Hager sets the stage by describing the world’s reliance in the 19th century on nitrates from Peru and Chile that could be used as natural fertilizer or to make gunpowder, and finds plenty of human drama in the battles to control the lucrative international trade. Determined to help end Germany’s dependence on South American nitrates, Bosch and Haber worked at the German chemical company BASF to find a way to convert nitrogen into ammonia. Bosch developed the process, and Haber designed bigger industrial plants. By 1944, the Haber-Bosch factory at Leuna—a primary target for U.S. bombers—occupied three square miles and employed 35,000 workers. The author not only illuminates the scientists’ complex work, but also digs into their personal lives. Bosch, a melancholic with a huge villa in Heidelberg, asked Hitler to spare Jewish scientists for the sake of German chemistry and physics (the Fuhrer replied: “Then we’ll just have to work 100 years without physics and chemistry!”). Haber, a Jew, developed the chlorine gas used in World War I, sought a way to extract gold from the oceans to pay off German war reparations and conducted research that led to the development of the Zyklon B gas used in Nazi death camps. Science writing of the first order. — starred review, Kirkus Reviews
• The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Timothy Gowers, editor – The Princeton Companion to Mathematics is a friendly, informative reference book that attempts to explain what mathematics is about and what mathematicians do. Over 200 entries by a panel of experts span such topics as: the origins of modern mathematics; mathematical concepts; branches of mathematics; mathematicians that contributed to the present state of the discipline; theorems and problems; the influences of mathematics and some perspectives. Its presentations are selective, satisfying, and complete within themselves but not overbearingly comprehensive. Any reader from a curious high school student to an experienced mathematician seeking information on a particular mathematical subject outside his or her field will find this book useful. The writing is clear and the examples and illustrations beneficial. -- Frank Swetz, Convergence
• Wood: Craft, Culture, History by Harvey Green – Histories of materials continue to rise in popularity, exemplified by this excursion into the uses and aesthetics of wood. Green, a student and practitioner of the craft of woodworking, spans the remarkable range of objects created from trees throughout human history. In addition to defining terms, such as the distinction between hard- and softwoods, Green reiterates throughout this fluent and pleasing work the uniqueness of wood, which contributes to its attraction. No two pieces are alike in appearance, and specific species of trees are preferred for specific purposes: ash for baseball bats, oak for ships, cedar for furniture. Whatever object Green investigates, he discovers its layers of historical, commercial, environmental, and artistic significance, not least in the substitution for wood by other materials. Despite this trend, however, wood is always more appealing to sight and touch than its competition: nobody loves a titanium golf club the way they do a persimmon-headed driver. Sophisticated but approachable, Green's work richly satisfies curiosity about the subject. – Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
• Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ji-li Jiang – A child's nightmare unfolds in Jiang's chronicle of the excesses of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution in China in the late 1960s. She was a young teenager at the height of the fervor, when children rose up against their parents, students against teachers, and neighbor against neighbor in an orgy of doublespeak, name-calling, and worse. Intelligence was suspect, and everyone was exhorted to root out the "Olds''--old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. She tells how it felt to burn family photographs and treasured heirlooms so they would not be used as evidence of their failure to repudiate a "black''--i.e., land-owning--past. In the name of the revolution, homes were searched and possessions taken or destroyed, her father imprisoned, and her mother's health imperiled--until the next round of revolutionaries came in and reversed many of the dicta of the last. Jiang's last chapter details her current life in this country, and the fates of people she mentions in her story. It's a very painful, very personal- -therefore accessible--history. -- From Kirkus Reviews
• Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism by Roger Wilkins – Wilkins brings the credentials of a history professor and longtime civil rights activist to this exploration of the reality of slavery and black patriotism in the founding of the nation famous for its notions of freedom. In the lives of George Mason, James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, Wilkins finds the essential ingredients of the ideals and standards on which the U.S. was built. He avoids the easy and predictable critique of these men in the contradiction of their ideals and their tolerance for the institution of slavery. Instead, he humanizes them, exploring the dominant influence of their class and status on their ideals and the influence of the material privileges they enjoyed as a result of slavery. Wilkins explores slavery within the context of the times but doesn't moderate the impetus for the current struggle that has resulted from the incapacity of these men to recognize their moral contradictions. This is an important look at the essential and ongoing contradictions at the heart of American ideals of liberty and patriotism. -- from Booklist

Selected Recent English Language Arts Acquisitions

• William Faulkner: Lives and Legacies by Carolyn Porter – In this newest volume in Oxford's Lives and Legacies series, Carolyn Porter, a leading authority on William Faulkner, offers an insightful account of Faulkner's life and work, with special focus on the breathtaking twelve-year period when he wrote some of the finest novels in American literature. Porter ranges from Faulkner's childhood in Mississippi to his abortive career as a poet, his sojourn in New Orleans (where he met a sympathetic Sherwood Anderson and wrote his first novel Soldier's Pay), his short but strategically important stay in Paris, his "rescue" by Malcolm Crowley in the late 1940s, and his winning of the Nobel Prize. But the heart of the book illuminates the formal leap in Faulkner's creative vision beginning with The Sound and the Fury in 1929, which sold poorly but signaled the arrival of a major new literary talent. Indeed, from 1929 through 1942, he would produce, against formidable odds--physical, spiritual, and financial--some of the greatest fictional works of the twentieth century, including As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses. Porter shows how, during this remarkably sustained burst of creativity, Faulkner pursued an often feverish process of increasingly ambitious narrative experimentation, coupled with an equally ambitious thematic expansion, as he moved from a close-up study of the white nuclear family, both lower and upper class, to an epic vision of southern, American, and ultimately Western culture. Porter illuminates the importance of Faulkner's legacy not only for American literature, but also for world literature, and reveals how Faulkner lives on so powerfully, both in the works of his literary heirs and in the lives of readers today. – Amazon.com
• The Story of Forgetting: A Novel by Stefan Merrill Block – In Stefan Merrill Block’s extraordinary debut, three narratives intertwine to create a story that is by turns funny, smart, introspective, and revelatory. Abel Haggard is an elderly hunchback who haunts the remnants of his family’s farm in the encroaching shadow of the Dallas suburbs, adrift in recollections of those he loved and lost long ago. As a young man, he believed himself to be “the one person too many”; now he is all that remains. Hundreds of miles to the south, in Austin, Seth Waller is a teenage “Master of Nothingness”–a prime specimen of that gangly, pimple-rashed, too-smart breed of adolescent that vanishes in a puff of sarcasm at the slightest threat of human contact. When his mother is diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Seth sets out on a quest to find her lost relatives and to conduct an “empirical investigation” that will uncover the truth of her genetic history. Though neither knows of the other’s existence, Abel and Seth are linked by a dual legacy: the disease that destroys the memories of those they love, and the story of Isidora–an edenic fantasy world free from the sorrows of remembrance, a land without memory where nothing is ever possessed, so nothing can be lost. Through the fusion of myth, science, and storytelling, this novel offers a dazzling illumination of the hard-learned truth that only through the loss of what we consider precious can we understand the value of what remains. – Amazon.com
• The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel by Kathleen Kent – History is more than facts and figures; it's something that happens to all of us. That's the thought that may strike readers of Kent's luminous first novel, set at the time of the Salem witch trials. In fact, Martha Carrier, Kent's grandmother back nine generations, was hanged as a witch in 1692. As portrayed here by her daughter, Sarah, Martha is a proud, stubborn, prickly woman, unbending in her beliefs and uninterested in public opinion. When Sarah returns to her family, having been sent away with a little sister because one of her brothers has the plague, she's not sure she wants to go back to her cold mother and dour, seven-foot father, who has some mysterious connection to Cromwell. But when malicious girls start pointing fingers, neighbor turns against neighbor, and Martha is told she will be arrested for witchcraft, she will not run, and she will not make a false confession. But Martha tells Sarah that when she is interrogated about her mother's activities, she must lie to save herself. Amidst the painful details of jail and persecution, deep-seated suspicion and familial betrayal, it is this powerful act of love that crowns the book. – Highly recommended. Library Journal (starred review) Barbara Hoffert
• The Rich Man of Pietermaritzburg by Sibusiso Nyembezi – Published in Zulu more than 50 years ago and voted one of Africa’s best books of the twentieth century, this novel is pure farce about what happens when a stranger comes to town. Mr. C.C. Ndebenkulu, Esq., says he is a very busy city man, well informed, well traveled, and used to doing business with the white owners of abattoirs and butcheries, who never address him without calling him “Esquire.” Out of pure benevolence he has come to help the rural community in Natal, South Africa, sell their cattle for very good money before it is too late. Lured by flattery and greed, many fall for his offer. But not all are tricked. The educated young people and many women laugh at his self-importance and see right through him. Of course, the reader always knows it is a scam; but the angry confrontations are hilarious, especially when the slimy con artist gets his due. – Amazon.com
• What I Was: A Novel by Meg Rosoff – “This whole novel is built on a surprise (which caught me totally unaware), but beyond the surprise lies the beauty of what it means to live without junk in your life, only essential beauty, together with the reminder that all of it—the junk and the beauty—will be gone in a twinkling. This is a lovely book.”—Washington Post
• Someone Knows My Name: A Novel by Lawrence Hill – Stunning, wrenching and inspiring, the fourth novel by Canadian novelist Hill (Any Known Blood) spans the life of Aminata Diallo, born in Bayo, West Africa, in 1745. The novel opens in 1802, as Aminata is wooed in London to the cause of British abolitionists, and begins reflecting on her life. Kidnapped at the age of 11 by British slavers, Aminata survives the Middle Passage and is reunited in South Carolina with Chekura, a boy from a village near hers. Her story gets entwined with his, and with those of her owners: nasty indigo producer Robinson Appleby and, later, Jewish duty inspector Solomon Lindo. During her long life of struggle, she does what she can to free herself and others from slavery, including learning to read and teaching others to, and befriending anyone who can help her, black or white. Hill handles the pacing and tension masterfully, particularly during the beginnings of the American revolution, when the British promise to free Blacks who fight for the British: Aminata's related, eventful travels to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone follow. In depicting a woman who survives history's most trying conditions through force of intelligence and personality, Hill's book is a harrowing, breathtaking tour de force. Starred Review, Publisher’s Weekly
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – The text of this new scholarly edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the first ever to be based on Mark Twain's complete, original manuscript-including its first 665 pages, which had been lost for over a hundred years when they turned up in 1990 in a Los Angeles attic. The text has been thoroughly re-edited using this manuscript, restoring thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation which had been corrupted by Mark Twain's typist, typesetters, and proofreaders. It includes all of the 174 first edition illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble, which the author called "most rattling good." The editorial matter is extraordinarily rich. A new introduction tells the story of how Mark Twain's book was written, edited, published, and received, and spells out in detail the effect of the newly discovered manuscript on the text. Included are revised and updated maps of the Mississippi River valley, explanatory notes, glossary, and several documentary appendixes such as Twain's literary working notes, facsimile manuscript pages, facsimile reproductions of the author's revisions for his public reading tours, and contemporary advertisements and announcements. Also included are a description of the manuscript and all texts used in preparing this edition and complete lists of the author's revisions.
• Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences by James R. Mellow – Award-winning author Mellow offers a thorough reassessment of a man who was both a literary giant and an icon for his age. Uncovering new material, Mellow reveals aspects of the writer's life unexplored by previous biographers. "The best work done on the writer to date."—The New York Times.
• Peace Like a River by Leif Enger – What readers will appreciate first in Enger's marvelous novel is the language. His limpid sentences are composed with the clarity and richness for which poets strive. It takes longer to get caught up in the story, but gradually, as the complex narrative unwinds, readers will find themselves immersed in an exceptionally heartfelt and moving tale about the resilience of family relationships, told in retrospect through the prism of memory. "We all hold history differently inside us," says narrator Reuben, who was an adolescent in Minnesota in the 1960s, when his brother, Davy, shot and killed two young men who were harassing the family. Rueben's father--in Rueben's estimation fully capable of performing miracles even though the outside world believed him to be lost in the clouds--packs Reuben and his sister up and follows the trail Davy has left in his flight from the law. Their journey comprises the action in the novel, but this is not really a book about adventures on the road. Rather, it is a story of relationships in which the exploration of character takes precedence over incident. Enger's profound understanding of human nature stands behind his compelling prose. -- Starred Review, Booklist

Selected Recent Art, Music & Film/Theatre Studies Acquistions

• The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art by Tim Blanning – Drawing on examples ranging across the last four centuries, Blanning traces the path of music from its place as servant to its current position of supremacy over all other arts in terms of status, influence, and material rewards. The author intermixes popular and classical music and musicians, jumping back and forth from one era to another, from the concert hall to the iPod, to demonstrate how music has reinforced various social and political agendas...This is not intended to be a history of music; it is a brilliantly written history of the steady growth of the power of music and its performers.--Timothy J. McGee, Library Journal
• The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials & Techniques in Art by Gerald Ward – Any genuine work of art is born of the interaction between the artist, his or her materials, and the methods used to create the finished product. This hefty volume is “aimed at providing an introduction . . . to the enormous range of materials and methods used to create works of art from ancient times to the 21st century and . . . to the various techniques used to examine and conserve them by conservators and others.” The comprehensive treatment is unusual in a literature generally devoted to single materials or crafts. Considering both fine arts and crafts—without designating crafts as a lesser art form—the alphabetically arranged articles have been abridged from either the Dictionary of Art (1996) or Grove Art Online, with the sections on history and usage either eliminated or severely edited. Thus, although the content is not new, the focus on materials and techniques is sharper. Each article begins with a succinct introductory paragraph that amounts to a definition of the material or technique. Related terms are noted in small capitals, thus providing internal cross-referencing. The body of each article is detailed, clear, and well written. Entries conclude with extensive updated bibliographies of print works, many published within the last 10 years. Well-placed black-and-white illustrations are augmented by a center section containing color plates, alphabetically arranged, of selected artworks demonstrating the use of materials and techniques, from alabaster to wax encaustic. Beginning with a key to abbreviations, the volume closes with an extensive and accurate index.
• Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography by Meryle Secrest – Engrossing story of the Balzac-scaled life of the great architect. Wright (1867-1959) was born in Wisconsin to a Welsh family of radical thinkers and was nurtured to be an architect by his mother, who told him he was destined for greatness. He dropped out of the Univ. of Wisconsin after two semesters to take a draftsman's job at $8.00 a week, and soon was working for the master architect Louis Sullivan (inventor of the skyscraper). Within a year, Wright had become chief designer at Adler and Sullivan and also had married the first of his three wives. In the next 30 years, he was to abandon his wife and six children (and his phenomenally successful practice), calling marriage a "barnyard institution. I am a wild bird''; marry a morphine-addicted heiress and follower of Mary Baker Eddy who was killed by an axe-stroke to the brain by an insane servant; marry a Serbian beauty 30 years his junior who was an instructor for G.I. Gurdjieff; build his beloved house Taliesen (East) three times-- it twice burned to the ground; time and again ingeniously raise prodigious sums of money and spend them in profligate excess; revive his career with the building of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo--the only major structure to remain undamaged in the largest earthquake of the century in 1923 in Japan; and go on to greater triumphs, culminating with the Guggenheim Museum in 1956. Secrest, who had access to the newly opened archives at Wright's Memorial Foundation, does a superb job in telling the human side of Wright's story. And without allowing it to overmaster her narrative, she provides clear architectural background to explicate Wright's designs, stature, and influence. Definitive. -- Kirkus Reviews
• Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989 by Robert Descharnes and Gilles Neret – Picasso called Dalí "an outboard motor that’s always running." Dalí thought himself a genius with a right to indulge in whatever lunacy popped into his head. Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was one of the century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics — and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting, approaching the subconscious with extraordinary sensitivity and imagination. This lively monograph presents the infamous Surrealist in full color and in his own words. His provocative imagery is all here, from the soft watches to the notorious burning giraffe. A friend of the artist for over thirty years, privy to the reality behind Dalí’s public image, author Robert Descharnes is uniquely qualified to analyze Dalí — both the man and the myth.
• What It Is by Lynda Barry – How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry's compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry's first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: "The ordinary is extraordinary."--From publisher description.
• American Cinema [videorecording] – An analysis of the American motion picture industry that combines rare archival film, key scenes from immortal movies, interviews with leading filmmakers and commentary from noted film scholars and critics.
• The Oxford Project by Stephen G. Bloom and Peter Feldstein – "What a marvelous way to get at 'who we are' as people. This powerful, confessional book draws its strength from the truth that so-called ordinary people, not those with bold-faced names, are actually the heroes of our American drama." -- Ken Burns, Emmy award-winning director of The Civil War

Selected Recent History and Social Studies Acquisitions

• Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante – Sewall (1652–1730) was an English-born American jurist who presided over the 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Nineteen innocent men and women were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones, the result of trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Some suspects were strangers to Sewall, but others were his friends. For several years, he struggled with a growing sense of shame and remorse and later assumed in public the blame for the executions. He spent much of the remainder of his life trying to restore himself in the eyes of God. Sewall wrote prodigiously and left behind extensive diaries, poems, essays, books, annotated almanacs, ledgers, and letters. His diary, covering the years from 1672 to 1729, was first published in the nineteenth century and is still in print. LaPlante also chronicles the man's later life—Sewall became the author of America's first antislavery tract and published an essay affirming the equality of the sexes. A fascinating account of the man and of daily life in colonial America.
• The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert – In 1986, photographer Didier Lefèvre documented a seasoned Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) team en route to a region in the way of the insurgents’ war with the Soviet army supporting Afghanistan’s then-Marxist government. This wedding of his photos and Guibert’s European-realist comics records his arduous, frightening round trip from Normandy, where his mother lived. During the succeeding 20 years, Lefèvre lost the diary of his return trip but not his photographs. Scandalously few were published at the time, but they profit considerably by appearing in bulk and in this context; they put us near-palpably into their setting. What at first appears to be a very rough visual continuum, constantly jump-cutting from drawings to photos and back, quickly becomes suspenseful. Verbal development comes in the speech-balloons and captions of the drawings; no printing invades the photos, which become the powerful payoffs of the verbiage, at least until Lefèvre’s return trip, in which, his film and his health running out, he nearly perished. He took very few pictures then, and here Guibert rises to the challenge of maintaining the scary impetus of Lefèvre’s adventure. Perhaps no medium other than this one could convey so tangibly what it is to deliver “human services” in a war zone in one of the least geographically hospitable, most beautiful places on earth. A magnificent achievement. -- starred review, Booklist
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham – It's no surprise that the editor of Newsweek can write a well-researched, well-written, and entertaining book on American history. What stands out about reviews of American Lion, however, is how often critics—even professional historians—said they learned something new about the seventh president. A few reviewers were not so impressed with Meacham's scholarly synthesis, especially regarding Jackson's unwavering approval of slavery, his removal of Native Americans despite the objections of the Supreme Court, and his vindictive qualities. But even these reviewers praised Meacham's ability to tell Jackson's story without resorting to the cliches of high school history textbooks.
• One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs – “One Minute to Midnight is nothing less than a tour de force, a dramatic, nail-biting page-turner that is also an important work of scholarship. Michael Dobbs combines the skills of an experienced investigative journalist, a talented writer and an intelligent historical analyst. His research is stunning. No other history of the Cuban missile crisis matches this achievement.” –Martin Sherwin, coauthor of American Prometheus
• Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner – Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. -- starred review, Publishers Weekly
• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan – The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect.” – New York Times

Selected Recent Science & Math Acquisitions

• Tree: A Life Story by David Suzuki and Wayne Grady – "Only God can make a tree," wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a "biography" of this extraordinary — and extraordinarily important — organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism's modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains of pollen. The authors recount the amazing characteristics of the species, how they reproduce and how they receive from and offer nourishment to generations of other plants and animals. The tree's pivotal role in making life possible for the creatures around it — including human beings — is lovingly explored. The richly detailed text and Robert Bateman's original art pay tribute to this ubiquitous organism that is too often taken for granted.
• The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom by Brian Cathcart – Cathcart (Test of Greatness: Britain's Struggle for the Atom Bomb), a former reporter for Reuters, presents a superb account of the genesis of nuclear physics in the first third of the 20th century. Although the centerpiece of his story is the experiment performed on April 14, 1932, by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in which an atom of lithium was split into two alpha particles (they would win a Nobel prize for this 19 years later), Cathcart fully describes the experiment's scientific and social context. Through crisp prose, interesting analogies and ample insight, he makes the basics of nuclear physics accessible while demonstrating the passion scientists have for their work. Cockcroft and Walton both worked under Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford at the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University at a time when precious little was known about the nucleus at the center of every atom. The race to understand the inner workings of the nucleus and to split an atom into its component parts was an international one, including labs in Germany, Denmark, Russia and the United States. The great progress that was made in a short time was all the more amazing given that labs had limited budgets and virtually all equipment first had to be conceptualized and then made from scratch. Cathcart instills in the reader a sense of excitement as the nuclear age unfolds around the world.
• Edison: A Life of Invention by Paul Israel – Edison's name is on 1,093 U.S. patents--more than any other person's. It is a measure of his renown that his surname alone suffices for the title of this book. Israel, managing editor of the Rutgers University edition of Edison's papers, has explored thoroughly the five million pages of documents housed at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, N.J., and so he is well positioned to discuss the eminent inventor's achievements. That he does with care and clarity. The well-known inventions--the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the kinetoscope for motion pictures, the carbon transmitter for telephones--are all here in detail, and so are the lesser-known ones as well as some Edisonian projects that did not succeed. Israel also paints a clear portrait of the man. One learns, among other things, of Edison's difficult relationships with his children, his indifference to his appearance and his singular notions about diet. (In his last years, when he was suffering from stomach trouble, "he consumed nothing more than a pint of milk every three hours.") Edison may well have been the "Inventor of the age," as he was orotundly described in the Grand Prize that he won at the Universal Exposition of 1878 in Paris, but he was in addition a complex and intriguing human being.
• The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston – Chronicles the reaction of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to the September 11 attacks and the October 2001 anthrax attacks, focusing on USAMRIID's top virologist, Peter Jahrling, and his work to combat the possible development of a superpox virus by terrorists worldwide.
• Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial [videorecording] – "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania, in a landmark battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students about an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design--the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and so must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply, and both parents and teachers filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state. ... Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants and expert scientists, this program presents the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District."
• Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres – Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted? Today, number crunching affects your life in ways you might never imagine. In this lively and groundbreaking new book, economist Ian Ayres shows how today's best and brightest organizations are analyzing massive databases at lightning speed to provide greater insights into human behavior. They are the Super Crunchers. From Internet sites like Google and Amazon that know your tastes better than you do, to a physician's diagnosis and your child's education, to boardrooms and government agencies, this new breed of decision makers are calling the shots. And they are delivering staggeringly accurate results. How can a football coach evaluate a player without ever seeing him play? Want to know whether the price of an airline ticket will go up or down before you buy? How can a formula outpredict wine experts in determining the best vintages? Super crunchers have the answers. In this brave new world of equation versus expertise, Ayres shows us the benefits and risks, who loses and who wins, and how super crunching can be used to help, not manipulate us.

I have seen the future of reading, and its name is Kindle

Those of you old enough to remember may recall that on October 27, 1975, Bruce Springsteen made the covers of both Newsweek and Time. In one of the accompanying articles, Jon Landau, a critic for Rolling Stone, declared "I have seen the future of rock and roll, and his name is Bruce Springsteen." Well, although not on the cover, Kindle 2, Amazon’s digital reader, was featured in the March 30, 2009 issues of both Newsweek and Time, and once again it seems fair to claim that we are seeing the future here.

Several years ago, when the first speculations were voiced that books were dead, killed by digital readers, I scoffed. But now, although I’ve not (yet) used a Kindle, I believe that it’s only a matter of time before we are all using digital devices to pursue our reading. Already the advantages of a Kindle are clear, such as adjustable font size, an on board dictionary which allows looking up unfamiliar words while reading, and the ability to carry around up to 1,500 books in a small, light-weight package. (Imagine students no longer lugging around 30 pound book bags because all of their reading materials are on their digital reader!)

Are books dead -- probably not. There are some things for which paper seems to be (inherently?) better suited, such as graphics. Art books and picture books are not going away tomorrow, or even next year. I expect that digital and print will coexist as complementary technologies because they each possess individual, unique strengths. I also expect that many of us who are old enough to have read those articles in Newsweek and Time about the Boss in 1975 may never give up the comfort and familiarity of holding, reading and owning books. But for those who have grown up reading text on computers there is an “of course-ness” that applies to digital readers. It is just the way things are.

All of this has enormous implications for libraries. Digital technology has already transformed libraries. (Remember card catalogs? Can't come into the David A. Nims Library at this moment? Well, you can search the catalog right now here.) EBooks and online databases bring library resources to you wherever you have Internet access. And just as the Internet hasn't made libraries obsolete but rather, more accessible, more necessary and more vital, digital readers will dramatically increase library circulations. When we're no longer amassing walls of books in our homes to represent our personal interests and our educational and cultural achievements, but we want books just to read, why would we pay for a digital download when we can borrow it from our library for free?

We're still at the beginning with all of this, and our sense of what will develop in the future is only emerging, but with the theoretical prospect of having "every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds" [Note: this is Amazon's stated goal with the Kindle], this is a very interesting time.

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

Recently the American Association of School Librarians published Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, a document which details learner use skills, resources, and tools necessary for students to become effective, independent and responsible life-long learners. In addition to these learning standards, the AASL is also working on indicators and assessments for the new learning standards (to be published in the winter of 2009), and related guidelines for school library media programs.

In future posts I will report on specific skills, dispositions in action, responsibilities, and self-assessment strategies related to the standards; here I want to present the common beliefs upon which these standards for the 21st century are built.

The first common belief is that reading is a window to the world. Of course this seems to go without saying, but in fact it is important to acknowledge and remind ourselves that reading is a foundational skill for learning. Reading is one of the essential skills that educators teach, and it involves not only "decoding and comprehension but also interpretation and the development of new understandings."

Second is that inquiry provides a framework for learning. Essentially, this means that for learning to occur, students must have not only skills, but the disposition to use those skills, coupled with an understanding of their own responsibilities, and self-assessment strategies. Inquiry involves skills, disposition to use those skills, a sense of responsibly and self-assessment.

Third, ethical behavior in the use of information must be taught. Students are taught to "seek diverse perspectives, gather and use information ethically, and use social tools responsibly and safely."

Fourth, technology skills are crucial for future employment needs. Moreover, it must be noted that technology skills are critical not only for future employment, but also learning, both in the future and now.

The final common belief upon which the standards for 21st-century learning are built is that equitable access is a key component for learning. Whereas the first four common beliefs apply to the learner, this fifth applies to the institutional context. Schools are obligated to provide equal access "to books and reading, to information, and to information technology in an environment that is safe and conducive to learning."

The AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner provide a clear statement of what are the appropriate and necessary ingredients in a productive learning environment. Schools and school library media centers will benefit from this clarity.

To see the full Standards document, go to the AASL's web site.